Urban Vulnerability: Inequality and Resilience in Indian Cities

Description

This book rigorously examines post-colonial urban life in India’s Global South cities. Through intensive ethnographic fieldwork across over twenty slums in Bhopal and Indore, Sanjay Jothe uncovers the realities of those who build and sustain cities, yet remain trapped on their economic and social margins.

It introduces “urban vulnerability” as a vital analytical tool. This framework captures the historical, social, and political forces – caste hierarchies, class divides, gender dynamics, migration patterns, and institutional discrimination – that forge hostile urban environments. Rather than portraying slum-dwellers as mere victims, the book celebrates their agency: everyday strategies of resilience, survival networks, and aspirations that keep cities alive from below, even amid precarity and exclusion.

This theoretically sophisticated work challenges Western-centric urban theories. It demands decolonised, people-centric investigations into lived experiences, revealing how cities promise escape from rural caste burdens but often reproduce deeper inequalities. Jothe calls for radical governance reforms prioritising equity, inclusion, and sustainability over capital-driven growth.

Ethnographically rich and analytically sharp, this timely intervention is essential for scholars, policymakers, activists, and students of urban studies, sociology, and social justice. It reimagines Indian cities as democratic commons, not market projects.